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Winners & Losers: HBO protects its throne, Hailo crashes and burns

▲ HBO

It’s not Netflix. It’s HBO™

Here in Canada, our broadcast regulator just concluded a long and laborious series of public hearings with the purpose of determining the future of Canadian television. (The outcome? More study!) But in the U.S., the major players are just getting on with it. Case in point is HBO, which announced this week that it will launch a standalone online streaming service next year (but not in Canada, of course). The network, home to Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, says the streaming platform will target the 10 million American households that pay for broadband Internet access, but not cable television. Some consumers have been agitating for HBO to pull this off for a long time, fed up with having to pay for a bundle of channels they never watch in order to get the one channel they do. HBO’s streaming strategy is just one more example of disruption to the traditional cable television model, and puts pressure on other networks to launch their own over-the-top services. That, ultimately, could give some consumers more reason to cancel their cable subscriptions. HBO’s streaming option won’t immediately be available in Canada when it launches next year. To access what are considered to be among the best television programs around these days, you’ll still have to subscribe to cable. But hey, you can always stream the latest season of Heartland over at CBC.